As noted here many times before, including the night Jordan Love was drafted, the Packers’ transition away from Aaron Rodgers has stark parallels to the team’s transition away from Brett Favre 15 years ago. In both cases, a first-round quarterback apprenticed behind a Hall of Fame quarterback for three long years before Green Bay decided to hand the keys to the franchise over to the younger player and trade the older player to the Jets. Now, of course, Love is in the role Rodgers played 15 years ago, while Rodgers is in Favre’s role.
Although they were and are completely different people (I can vouch for this from my time working for the Packers), Rodgers and Favre “retired” from the Packers in a very similar ways. Neither was feeling the love from the current Green Bay front office as much as they had from a previous one. Favre missed the stewardship of Ron Wolf; Rodgers missed that of Ted Thompson. Both quarterbacks took special care to thank the “backroom” of the organization who have worked there forever (training and equipment staff, security, etc.). And again, both had their replacements drafted three years before leaving the team, all the while playing at a high level. The parallels are uncanny.
Before the pending trade to the Jets, Rodgers’s comments last week confirmed what had been predicted for months, even if it has not sunk in completely for the vast Packer Nation: This is the end of Rodgers’s time in Green Bay. One of the greatest—if not the greatest—players in franchise history is moving on. In the simplest terms: It is time.
